2022 - Institute For Governance & Sustainable Development

New study shows that only with a dual assault on carbon dioxide and other largely neglected climate pollutants will it be possible to keep the 1.5°C guardrail in sight and stay below 2°C

Washington, DC, 23 May 2022— Slashing emissions of carbon dioxide, by itself, cannot prevent catastrophic global warming. But a new study concludes that a strategy that simultaneously reduces emissions of other largely neglected climate pollutants would cut the rate of global warming in half and give the world a fighting chance to keep the climate safe for humanity.

Published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to analyze the importance of cutting non-carbon dioxide climate pollutants vis a vis merely reducing fossil fuel emissions, in both the near-term and mid-term to 2050. It confirms increasing fears that the present almost exclusive focus on carbon dioxide cannot by itself prevent global temperatures from exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the internationally accepted guardrail beyond which the world’s climate is expected to pass irreversible tipping points.

Indeed, such decarbonization alone would be unlikely to stop temperatures from exceeding even the much more hazardous 2°C limit.

The study – by scientists at Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and others – concludes that adopting a “dual strategy” that simultaneously reduces emissions of both carbon dioxide and the other climate pollutants would cut the rate of warming in half by 2050, making it much more likely to stay within these limits.

The non-carbon dioxide pollutants include methane, hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, black carbon soot, ground-level ozone smog, as well as nitrous oxide. The study calculates that together these pollutants currently contribute almost as much to global warming as carbon dioxide. Since most of them last only a short time in the atmosphere, cutting them slows warming faster than any other mitigation strategy.

Until now, however, the importance of these non-carbon dioxide pollutants has been underappreciated by scientists and policymakers alike and largely neglected in efforts to combat climate change.

Recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclude that cutting fossil fuel emissions—the main source of carbon dioxide—by decarbonizing the energy system and shifting to clean energy, in isolation, actually makes global warming worse in the short term. This is because burning fossil fuels also emits sulphate aerosols, which act to cool the climate – and these are reduced along with the carbon dioxide when switching to clean energy. These cooling sulphates fall out of the atmosphere fast—within days to weeks—, while much of carbon dioxide lasts hundreds of years, thus leading to overall warming for the first decade or two.

The new study accounts for this effect and concludes that focusing exclusively on reducing fossil fuel emissions could result in “weak, near term warming” which could potentially cause temperatures to exceed the 1.5°C level by 2035 and the 2°C level by 2050.

In contrast, the dual strategy that simultaneously reduces the non-carbon dioxide pollutants, especially the short-lived pollutants, would enable the world to stay well below the 2°C limit, and significantly improve the chance of remaining below the 1.5°C guardrail.

Indeed, a key insight from the study is the need for climate policies to address all of the pollutants that are emitted from fossil fuel sources such as coal power plants and diesel engines rather than considering just carbon dioxide or methane individually as is common.

Continuing to slash fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions remains vital, the study emphasizes, since that will determine the fate of the climate in the longer term beyond 2050. Phasing out fossil fuels also is essential because they produce air pollution that kills over eight million people every year and causes billions of dollars of damage to crops.

Tackling both carbon dioxide and the short-lived pollutants at the same time offers the best and the only hope of humanity making it to 2050 without triggering irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.

For media inquiries please contact Giselle Gonzalez at ggonzalez@igsd.org

The paper, Mitigating Climate Disruption in Time: a self-consistent approach for avoiding both near-term and long-term global warming, is available here. A summary of the paper by the authors is here.

3 May 2022, Washington, DC — IGSD President Durwood Zaelke and IGSD media strategist Paul Bledsoe were recognized among Washington DC’s 500 most influential people shaping policy. Durwood and Paul were recognized for their efforts in climate and environment alongside 14 others.

Two of IGSD’s frequent collaborators, George David Banks from the Bipartisan Policy Center and David Doniger from NRDC, also were recognized.

“With the urgency of the climate crisis, it’s critical for policymakers to focus on cutting the short-lived super climate pollutants to slow self-reinforcing feedbacks as fast as possible to avoid irreversible tipping points, and this recognition will help,” said Durwood Zaelke.

4 April 2022— The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its Sixth Assessment Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, charting the narrow path left to reduce the danger of extreme weather and climate disruption and avoid the irreversible and catastrophic damage from continuing our fossil fuel addiction.

The report reaffirms the central role of mitigating methane emissions to keep the climate safe. Methane is a climate pollutant that is over 80 times more potent in causing warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The only mitigation pathways that keep 1.5 degrees Celsius warming within reach with limited overshoot require cutting methane by at least 30 percent by the end of this decade. This is the goal of the Global Methane Pledge launched by the United States and the European Union last November at COP26 and already endorsed by over 111 countries.

“If the last report from the Sixth Assessment was an atlas of human suffering and failed leadership, this report is an atlas of human hope and the last chance for the leadership we need from the heads of State to return to a safe climate,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and a peer-reviewer of the report.

Zaelke added, “In this do-or-die moment, the biggest immediate opportunity we have is to cut methane emissions, which also happens to be the fastest and cheapest way to slow warming. We need to move with lightning speed to win the methane sprint to 2030, even as we’re also running the marathon to decarbonize and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.”

“We are in a climate emergency,” said Romina Picolotti, Senior Policy Analyst at IGSD, noting that“heads of State must act in emergency mode to take the helm and steer humankind to safety.” Picolotti added, “Right now we are walking towards a cliff and we are accelerating our pace, and once we jump there is no way back. We have the technologies, we know the science, now is the time for high political will and finance to deploy the solutions at scale. We can and must reduce 45% of methane by 2030 according to 2020 levels.”

“We need to keep hold of the 1.5 degrees Celsius guardrail. Overshoot is a death sentence for vulnerable people and ecosystems that can’t come back if pushed too far or too fast. Cutting methane is the only mitigation strategy we know that can slow warming fast enough to shave the overshoot,” said Dr. Gabrielle Dreyfus, Chief Scientist at IGSD and a peer-reviewer of the report.

Adequately responding to the climate emergency requires moving beyond voluntary measures and taking actions consistent with the following key principles:

Keep hold of the 1.5°C guardrail — overshoot is a death sentence for vulnerable communities

Every fraction of a degree of warming will increase the losses and damages impacting human and natural systems. Climate disruption is already affecting millions of people, with over 3 billion living in vulnerable places. We are perilously close to crossing temperature thresholds between 1.5 and 2°C with potentially abrupt and irreversible impacts on Arctic permafrost, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and threatened and unique ecosystems.

Win the sprint to 2030 during this, the decisive decade

The 1.5°C guardrail is likely to be breached by the 2030s. The WGII report issued last month emphasized the urgency of slowing warming and limiting overshoot of 1.5°C, a guardrail once considered relatively safe guardrail. The extent and duration of an overshoot risks setting off more self-reinforcing feedbacks and crossing more tipping points that cause irreversible damage.

Use two parallel strategies to slow warming in the near term by cutting methane and other non-CO₂ climate pollutants, and to limit warming in the long term by cutting CO₂

The only way to shave the overshoot peak is to pursue parallel strategies that pair deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by rapidly shifting to clean energy with fast and deep cuts in methane and other short-lived climate pollutants. Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide is essential to limiting warming in the long term while cutting methane is the only mitigation strategy that can slow warming in the next twenty years.

These parallel strategies are complementary and reinforcing and should not be traded off. Cutting more CO₂ now has a limited impact on the rate of warming over the next two decades because CO₂ has a long lifetime and because reducing CO₂ emissions from most fossil fuel sources also reduces the cooling that comes from the reflective aerosol particles that are co-emitted with fossil fuel burning. Conversely, reducing methane emissions alone has a limited effect on warming in the long term.

Only by adopting parallel strategies that value both keeping the 1.5°C guardrail within reach in the near term and staying well below 2°C through the end of this century can we chart a course for a livable planet.

Background on Sixth Assessment: The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report cycle, which began in 2015, just released the contribution from Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change. This follows the contribution from Working Group I Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis in August 2021 and Working Group II Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability in February 2022. Government delegates and report authors have been meeting online to accept the underlying technical assessment report and finalize a summary for policymakers. A synthesis report will be the last of the AR6 products and is scheduled to be published in September 2022, completing the Sixth Assessment Report.

Ghana’s Campaign to Avoid Dumping of Damaging Appliances

1 April 2022— A new paper published today in the Duke Law & Policy Forum reveals the burdens developing countries like Ghana face as exporting countries transition to more efficient and climate-friendly cooling products. It underscores opportunities to strengthen the Montreal Protocol to make good on its mission to protect stratospheric ozone and climate while fostering environmental justice.

The Importance of Stopping Environmental Dumping In Ghana: The Case of Inefficient New and Used Cooling Appliances with Obsolete Refrigerants, authored by a team of international climate and ozone technical experts, explains how environmentally harmful product dumping (“environmental dumping”) of new and used low-efficiency cooling appliances with obsolete ozone-depleting and climate-damaging refrigerants in African countries impoverishes communities, hinders economic development, threatens ecological systems, and harms public health. The use of low-efficiency cooling appliances increases energy demand, leading to higher emissions and limiting affordable energy access in African countries. These low-efficiency appliances contain refrigerants with high global-warming potential (GWP) and may also contain ozone-depleting substances.

Powering refrigerators and ACs consumes about 17% of global electricity generation and makes up an increasing share of electricity demand in buildings. In many African countries, running a refrigerator for a year costs more than 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, assuming 459 kWh/yr consumption, which is well below the measured consumption of refrigerators in Ghana prior to the adoption of energy efficiency policies.

Money wasted on electricity pollutes air, water, and land with an increase in health care costs and associated misery. However, money saved on electricity can be spent locally on health, education, nutrition, and quality of life.

This pathbreaking publication is a blueprint for the shared responsibility of exporting countries, manufacturers, and importing countries. The publication calls on exporting countries to update and enhance the enforcement of their laws and urges global manufacturers to stop exporting inefficient products with obsolete refrigerants to Ghana and other African countries. Implicit in the article is the need for all involved to consider the environmental justice implications of policies that allow exporting products or components to the developing world that would not conform to the shipping or manufacturing country’s own standards.

“The high ambition of this paper is to raise the bar on global cooperation for stratospheric ozone and climate protection,” said Kofi A. Agyarko, Director, Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, & Climate Change (REEECC), Ghana Energy Commission. “Ghana and all of Africa are demanding that trading partners help enforce the laws of importing countries that aim to protect the Earth for future generations. It is incumbent on all such partners not to add to the burdens our own enforcement personnel face as a result of environmentally harmful product dumping.”

“The junk appliances dumped in Ghana are energy vampires that are stealing energy needed for development, accelerating climate change, and harming the ozone layer, said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). “We’ll continue to support those working to stop these crimes.”

“It is quite remarkable when authorities from different government agencies come together on a policy of global importance. In this case, the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency and Ghana Energy Commission saw eye-to-eye on how to stop dumping of inefficient and obsolete cooling equipment and strengthened our resolve to continue this effort for Ghana, for all of Africa, and for the world,” said Emmanuel Osae-Quansah, Director, National Ozone Unit and Head of Climate Change, Ghana Environmental Protection Agency.”

“As a Senior Enforcement Officer for the Ghana Energy Commission I appreciate how powerful this publication will be in Africa’s vital efforts to fulfill the obligations of the Montreal Protocol and Paris Climate Agreement,” said Hubert Zan. “I am optimistic that governments of countries that export cooling appliances to Africa will realize that everyone benefits from energy efficiency improvement and the ban or phasedown of synthetic chemicals that are powerful ozone-depleting and greenhouse gases.”

The study was authored by Kofi A. Agyarko, Director, and Hubert Zan, Senior Enforcement Officer, Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, & Climate Change (REEECC), Ghana Energy Commission; and Emmanuel Osae-Quansah, Director, National Ozone Unit, Ghana Environmental Protection Agency; as well as Africa- and North America-based IGSD experts Stephen O. Andersen, Director of Research; Tad Ferris, Senior Counsel; Gabrielle Dreyfus, Chief Scientist; Xiaopu Sun, Senior China Counsel; Mohamed Rida Derder, Special Counsel for North Africa; Leslie Olonyi Bosire, Legal Advisor, Kenya; and Laura Bloomer, Staff Attorney.

The Importance of Stopping Environmental Dumping In Ghana: The Case of Inefficient New and Used Cooling Appliances with Obsolete Refrigerants, available for download here.

16 March 2022— Today, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and Ministry of Commerce jointly released the Opinions on Promoting the Green Development of the “Belt and Road Initiative” (“2022 Opinions” or “Opinions”).

The Opinions illustrate a number of key areas of cooperation for green development of the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) as well as relevant supporting systems, such as financial mechanisms and capacity building, and communicational platforms. The Opinions are the latest in a number of China policy developments aimed at curbing the environmental and climate-forcing impacts of Chinese overseas projects and exports. In light of the recent global focus on methane mitigation as a near-term climate solution, many of these areas (e.g., waste treatment, “green” standards, environmentally friendly products and services, climate mitigation, and capacity building) are ripe for potential BRI-country cooperation.

Continue reading here.

08 March 2022 — The 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer not only put the stratospheric ozone layer on the road to recovery and kept humanity safe from harmful ultraviolet radiation but it has also done more than any other agreement to slow catastrophic global warming. The success of this treaty has hinged on a combination of factors, among them the purposeful and effective collaboration within the Ozone community, recognized in a new book out today, Partnering: Forge the Deep Connections That Make Great Things Happen by Jean Oelwang.

Partnering explores how building deep business and personal relationships lays the foundation of a meaningful life. She draws from the wisdom of many legendary partnerships including Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Ben and Jerry, Desmond and Leah Tutu, and the collective started by Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland that saved humanity by protecting stratospheric ozone.

Among the sixty great partnerships who have made a profound difference – ranging from business partners, to friends, to life partners – Oelwang spotlights Director of Research at the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) Dr. Stephen O. Andersen, Nobel Laureates Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, and former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Mostafa Tolba, as key partners responsible for addressing the first great threat to the global atmosphere.

Partnering also recognizes Brian G. Gardiner, Jonathan Shanklin, and Joseph Farman (who made the discovery of the ‘Ozone hole’ in the 1980s), and Dr. Penelope Canan, and Dr. Nancy Reichman.

“The Montreal Protocol is the most successful international environmental treaty ever agreed,” said Dr. Stephen O. Andersen. “Read Jean Oelwang’s inspiring book to find hope for future generations.”

“Without the tireless work of the Ozone community, we would be facing even greater climate impacts, many of which would be irreversible and catastrophic,” said IGSD President Durwood Zaelke. “Partnering serves as a reminder of what the Ozone community accomplished with lessons to protect the climate before it is too late.”

Jean Oelwang is president and founding CEO of Virgin Unite, an entrepreneurial foundation that builds collectives, incubates ideas, and re-invents systems for a better world. All author proceeds from book sales will be donated to Plus Wonder – an independent not-for-profit initiative inspiring deep connections for better lives, better organizations, and a better world.

Partnering: Forge the Deep Connections That Make Great Things Happen is available for order here.

See IGSD produced tribute film to Nobel Laureate Mario Molina released on the one year anniversary of his passing here.

Washington, DC, 23 February 2022 — According to the latest analysis released by the International Energy Agency today super polluting global methane emissions are significantly undercounted and on the rise. The 2022 update of the IEA Global Methane Tracker emphasizes once again that methane mitigation presents the biggest, fastest and cheapest opportunity for climate action in the near term, and is critical for keeping the 1.5 °C temperature target in sight.

Since the release of its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C in 2018, and again reinforced in the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the IPCC has been clear that to limit warming to 1.5 °C, with no or limited overshoot, requires pulling back three separate levers: cutting CO₂ emissions in half by 2030; making deep cuts to methane and the other short-lived super climate pollutants by the 2040s and; removing 500 to 1000 billion tonnes of CO₂ by the end of the century.

“To slow the rate of warming in the next two decades decarbonization must occur in tandem with deep cuts to methane and the other super-climate pollutants, as decarbonization alone cannot reduce warming fast enough to slow the dangerous self-reinforcing feedbacks where the Earth starts to warm itself,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “While decarbonization starts to slow warming significantly after 2060, it actually increases the rate of warming for the first decade or two as the cooling aerosols co-emitted with burning coal and diesel are phased out alongside the CO₂ emissions.”

“It’s critical to transition to clean energy as fast as possible and achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050. But if we don’t eliminate methane leaks during the transition, we’ll lose control of the climate system before we reach 2050. This is not a zero-sum game. We need to do both to survive,” Zaelke added.

The world needs to focus on “implementation plus”, as called for by Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, which includes decarbonization plus fast mitigation from cutting methane and the other short-lived climate pollutants such as hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, black carbon soot, and tropospheric (or ground-level) ozone. It also includes stopping deforestation and otherwise protecting natural carbon sinks.

The 2022 update of the IEA Global Methane Tracker provides, for the first time, a complete set of country-level estimates for methane emissions from the energy sector, which is responsible for around 40% of total anthropogenic methane emissions. The tracker also found that methane emissions from the energy sector are about 70% greater than the amount national governments have officially reported.

The findings come just three months after 111 nations agreed to support the Global Methane Pledge launched at COP26, November 2021. Led by the European Commission and the United States, participants agreed to reduce global methane emissions from human activities – including agriculture, the energy sector, and other sources – by at least 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. The pledge shows a powerful commitment for fast methane mitigation but much remains to be done as promises are not yet on track and methane concentrations in the atmosphere are growing at record rates.

The inclusion in the Global Methane Tracker of country-by-country estimates for coal activities, alongside those for oil and gas operations, found China the largest source of global energy-related methane emissions, followed by Russia and the United States.

Durwood Zaelke further added, “the IEA’s Global Methane Tracker is an indispensable resource to tackle dangerous methane emissions. Satellite observation of high leak rates can help identify the worst and marginally less bad producers providing a pathway for where policy efforts will be most effective. This information can facilitate decision-making in real-time, for example with Germany’s rejection of Nord Stream 2, the Russian gas pipeline designed to double the amount of Russian gas flowing into Germany. Now there is an opportunity to favor gas with the lowest methane leak rates.”

“The only way to prevent the very worst of climate impacts requires aggressive methane mitigation today. A mitigation opportunity this big and this fast can’t be left to a pledge. The heads of State need to negotiate a formal methane agreement, just as they are about to start for the threat from plastics. The next step will be to develop a global methane agreement inspired by the Montreal Protocol.”

Watch the IEA Global Methane Tracker release here.

The Global Methane Tracker is here.

7 February 2022— Burning trees and other forest biomass for energy is contrary to climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and environmental justice goals. Governments must stop promoting climate-damaging forest bioenergy and instead invest in strategies to decrease energy demand, deploy low-emissions energy like solar and wind, and protect forests. These are the conclusions of a new article published in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.

A Call to Stop Burning Trees in the Name of Climate Mitigation, based on leading science, explains how forest bioenergy has a substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint and will accelerate warming for decades. In fact, burning woody biomass releases more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than fossil fuels per unit of energy. It takes many decades for tree regrowth to offset those emissions. Plus relying on tree regrowth ignores the damage to natural forests from harvest – both to forests’ carbon sink capacity and biodiversity. The bioenergy industry, including the wood pellet industry in the United States, also exacerbates environmental injustice.

“To meet our climate targets and protect communities from catastrophic warming, the false accounting of forest bioenergy’s emissions must end. Governments should follow the science and implement policies that reflect the urgency of the climate crisis – not those that would increase emissions for decades and destroy valuable carbon sinks,” said Laura Bloomer, Legal Fellow at the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and co-lead author of the article.

Nevertheless, many countries promote and subsidize forest bioenergy. The article describes the consequences of including forest bioenergy in the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED). In the RED, forest bioenergy is assumed to have zero CO₂combustion emissions, even though bioenergy power plants spew CO₂ and other pollutants into the air. The RED’s bad accounting trick makes forest bioenergy eligible for renewable energy subsidies and incentivizes power plants to switch to forest bioenergy and falsely claim they’ve reduced their emissions.

“Countries have to protect and enhance the natural carbon sinks including forests, to slow self-reinforcing feedbacks and avoid dangerous climate tipping points, on the way to net-zero by mid-century,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of IGSD. “Countries must move away from forest bioenergy which not only damages the forest sinks but also worsens the air pollution, biodiversity loss and environmental injustice.”

Beyond the EU, the article provides an overview of bioenergy policies in the United States and China. While neither country’s bioenergy consumption matches the EU’s in scale, it is important that both large emitters do not follow the EU’s harmful model as they work to decarbonize.

Many countries, including the EU, US, and China, are considering using bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to reach their mid-century climate goals. Yet large-scale BECCS is not a viable climate solution. Not only is the CCS technology not yet available at scale, but BECCS also suffers from the same shortcomings of bioenergy. Because of bioenergy’s emissions footprint and the associated forest destruction, BECCS will accelerate warming in the coming decades.

The Authors argue that countries should end subsidies for and move away from forest bioenergy. Instead, countries should work at all levels (domestic, regional, and international) to (1) take action to lower energy demand; (2) deploy low-emission energy sources like wind and solar; and (3) invest in strategies to protect and enhance forests. Actions to protect carbon sinks like forests are designed to sequester more carbon and prevent already-stored carbon from being released into the atmosphere. They complement quick actions to reduce CO₂ and other super polluting climate pollutants like methane, hydrofluorocarbons, black carbon, and nitrous oxide. These fast mitigation strategies are critical to limiting warming to 1.5ºC.

IGSD team members Laura Bloomer, Xiaopu Sun, Gabrielle Dreyfus, Richard Ferris, Durwood Zaelke, and Connor Schiff co-authored the article.

Download A Call to Stop Burning Trees in the Name of Climate Mitigation here.

For media inquiries and additional information, contact: Laura Bloomer, lbloomer@igsd.org

24 January 2022- Today China’s State Council issued the 14^th Five-Year Comprehensive Work Plan on Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction (hereinafter referred to as the “Energy Work Plan” or “Plan”). The Energy Work Plan reflects key actions to implement the 14^th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, adopted on 11 March 2021. (Essentially, the Plan adopted 11 March 2021 constitutes China’s master five-year planning outline that is supported by and implemented through subsequently issued sectoral and ministerial work plans).

The Energy Work Plan lays out the targets, prioritizes government-led projects, and describes supporting policy mechanisms to promote energy conservation and reduce pollution emissions during the 14^th Five-Year period (2021-2025). This Work Plan will serve as a primary nationwide guide for China’s actions to address non-CO₂ climate pollutants and achieve the green transformation of its economy.

Continue reading here.

3 December 2021 (updated 7 January 2022)— The 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol) phases down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) greenhouse gases. Since 2016, the vast majority of countries that use and produce HFCs, including the United States, China, India, and European nations have agreed to avoid and curtail these potent GHGs. One of the major challenges to transitioning to lower global warming potential (GWP) alternatives identified by Parties to the Montreal Protocol is intellectual property rights (IPR), particularly in the automotive sector (including passenger automobiles, light trucks, and commercial and industrial vehicles used on- and off-road), where low-GWP refrigerant hydrofluoroolefin (HFO)-1234yf has become the predominant solution used in automobiles manufactured or exported to developed countries worldwide. Because a few transnational companies filed a large number of the patents on low-GWP chemical substitutes for HFCs, multiple developing countries (Article 5 Parties under the Montreal Protocol) have raised concerns that these patents could impede their ability to meet HFC reduction goals, significantly increase the costs of doing so, or put their industries at a competitive disadvantage if they do not. Furthermore, because the agreed incremental costs (including IPR) of the Article 5 Parties’ transition is paid from the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol (MLF), there is concern over affordability among Parties from developed countries (non-Article 5 Parties) donating to that fund.

A new paper, Status of Patents and Legal Challenges: Patents Related To the Use of HFO-1234yf In Auto Air Conditioning (2021) published by the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, addresses what has been described as a primary concern related to patents: even if chemical companies in Article 5 Parties can develop their own methods of producing HFOs or using them in the products they make, they could be prevented (absent a license) from selling their products at home and in key markets abroad in countries where restrictive patents have been granted to other companies, at least until the time when challenges to patents are decided or these patents expire.

The authors reviewed the status of patents granted on HFO-1234yf in automotive air conditioning (AC) in the US, Europe, and China, covering the largest automotive manufacturing regions in the world, primarily focusing on patents on the use of HFO-1234yf in automobiles, as opposed to patents on the manufacture of HFO-1234yf. There are multiple manufacturing pathways for HFO-1234yf which may be reviewed in a future paper. In the US and Europe, most patents on the use of HFO-1234yf in automobile AC systems were invalidated following legal challenge. However, this has not prevented the same chemical manufacturers from gaining or maintaining similar IPR in China, where some of the patents have yet to be challenged or overturned. This raises both legal and diplomatic questions about the validity of such patents and the environmental, financial, and trade-related benefits that could be realized if legal barriers to unrestricted use were removed.

This paper updates and expands upon a preceding publication co-authored by Stephen Seidel of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and Christine R. Ethridge of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC, published in July 2016 and titled “Status of Legal Challenges: Patents Related to the Use of HFO-1234yf in Auto Air Conditioning”.

Status of Patents and Legal Challenges: Patents Related to The use of HFO-1234yf in Auto Air Conditioning is available here.

Time to Broaden Strategy to Avert Catastrophic Climate Change